Lida Husik, aka Red Emma, multi-instrumentalist and vocalist, had made only brief appearances on other musicians' albums before recording her own solo in 1991: Bozo (Shimmy Disc), supported by Mark Kramer's crew.

Born in 1962 and raised in Washington, she was the drummer for Missing In Action during the punk-rock boom. A fan of hallucinogens and a militant feminist, she was drafted by Fleming in his Velvet Monkeys for a few days, and finally discovered by Kramer. Husik poured out her passion for psychedelic culture in her art. Her first 2 albums were recorded under the influence of massive doses of drugs.

The anemic apathy of her compositions harks back to Syd Barrett, mediated by 2 decades of experiments by female songwriters (Jane Siberry, Enya , Laurie Anderson, Kendra Smith); but both the guitar chords and the ethereal vocals sound like outtakes of Madcap Laugh (and the melody of Billboard is almost a plagiarism). In her little-girl register, just slightly hoarse (an octave lower than Madonna's), Husik mechanically whispers tenuous, naive refrains. She is not as bored as Lydia Lunch but she is just as detached from the lyrics she is singing. The "other" voice in her songs is the organ - "acid" and melodic, a counterpoint that sounds at the same time ancient and experimental. The arrangements did not use much more than the vocals and organ. In the end, the atmosphere seems as if it emerges from a dream (Mom) or hallucination (California Oregon). Emblematic of her style was the mode in which the title-track adapts its superb 1960s melody to minimalism. This highly creative and suggestive method yields visionary ballads like Diamond Day and intimate vignettes a` la Juliana Hatfield such as Halloween, ethereal marches a` la Enya such as Snow and ethnic-funk nightmares such as Farmhouse. Husik even pens her own playful and mischievous self-portrait in Hateful Hippy Girls. Husik's art is an impressionist art, an art of small strokes, and of cubistic deformation, of decomposition and recomposition; a romantic art, of frail emotions, and at the same time surrealistic, an art of hallucinations.

At the end of the same year, Husik had her second album ready. Your Bag (Shimmy Disc, 1992), which was different from the first above all in the duration and rarefaction of the tracks. If these are still the fundamental components of the sound, the execution borders on the intensity of Siberry's albums. It is Laurie Anderson however who inspires Your Bag, the most danceable and airy song, and above all the nursery rhyme of Toy Surprise (which features two intertwined and overlapping melodic themes, a classical accompaniment, and eventually turns into a dissonant raga, all during just seven minutes). The average tone is however far removed from the song format: Husik loves to delve into very dilated, feathery, hypnotic atmospheres by way of comatose psychedelic chants (such as the seven-minute Whirlybird). And thus in Marcel (nine minutes) the harmony breaks into small clouds of chords, held together by a mechanical rhythm, while Husik's voice floats weightless. Another novelty is that the Husik's vocals, always confined in that blurry octave, is a bit more flexible. And so her voice can even deliver a tiptoeing ballad like Ship Going Down. The finale, The Match From Mars, is altogether different from the rest, and perhaps foreshadows a sensational metamorphosis: it is a sort of "industrial" suite lasting ten minutes which accumulates "found" voices, samples, techno rhythms, and electronic noise.

The Return Of Red Emma was her first work not composed and performed under the influence of hallucinogens, and signaled a return to her political commitments of the past. Actually, the album exaggerates in post-feminist, hyper-realistic and paranoid themes, but also reaffirms a highly personal musical style, which can be both elegant and eccentric without turning haughty. Dreamy and anxious in AZT NO and trancey in the lysergic lullaby Happy, Husik certainly memorized the lesson of psychedelic music, but is matching it with a quiet pop sensibility (like in the catchy Highgate), and a propensity for the underground avant-garde. This latter aspect, the most intellectual aspect in her art, transpires in the jazz and experimental constructs of Light Of The Day and Pyramus And Thisbe or in ethnic hybrids such as the Native-American dance song Hopi Ants (one of the better numbers) and the stripped-down Earthquake Blues. Only in Back In The March she indulges in "hard-rock" sounds allowed a` la L7. For the rest of the album, she is never savage, wild or sarcastic. She is sometimes insecure, sometimes lewd; always convoluted and sick, a hybrid of Carla Bley, Nico, and Jane Siberry. Her forte are the hallucinogenic, depressing stories of Suicide Sedan or Hemlock, sung in a cocktail-lounge style which is indifferent, mechanic, even childish but drenched in an atmosphere of fatality or generally madness. And no less sinister are the shivers caused by the folk fable Matchgirl, with one of her most lyrical and terrifying texts. The arrangements (by Kramer) are basically perfect: faint instruments never prominent, guitar and keyboards subtly closer to the vocals, occasionally an accordion or a flute for a few seconds. The majority of Husik's music is roots-rock, unspoiled by sophistication or baroque temptations.

The project that followed Red Emma was a collaboration with British musician Beaumont Hannant: Sculputred (1994). Husik had the opportunity to hone her skills as a performer on the EP Evening At The Grange (Astralwerks, 1995). Promenade combines the vain babble of Enya and the rippling minimalism of Terry Riley. In Gregory Peck it is as if the Cocteau Twins recruited Meredith Monk. Textured further refines that art, indulging in electronic effects and dilation of vocals. This experimentation takes her to the border with new-age music in Now I'm Older Silver Girl, worthy of Vangelis' synthetic symphonic scores, and to the border of house music in Starbust 7.

Tearing away the cobwebs of her gray nightmare, Husik relegated the hallucinatory arrangements of her early work to historical relics and adopted the psychedelic song standard coined by Mark Kramer. Joyride (Caroline, 1995) is thus an album even more professional than its predecessor, despite Husik having to play almost all the instruments herself and layer her own vocals for harmonies—in other words, a collection of demos. Having (partially) cleaned herself of marijuana dependence, Husik reveals real musical talent, in addition to the eccentric genius she was already known for. Less of an artist and more of a musician, she abandons the psychiatric-hospital-style accompaniments that relied almost exclusively on the "acid" timbre of her organ, and assembles a respectable one-woman band.
As a singer, she is at the peak of her transformative abilities: now a wild garage rocker (Mother Richard), now a Broadway chanteuse from the 1950s (Glorious), now a tired and bored Nico (Flower Of The Hour), and now a snarling blues singer (Midnight Of Life). She returns to her psychedelic nightmares with the two most spacey and off-kilter tracks, Joyride and Star (a remake of Starbust), and in two gems, Donkey Pot and Dream Lake, lifted by Jefferson Airplane–style hallucinogens. The experiments of her previous EP bear fruit in the techno variations of Persinthia Lawdro & John, featuring some of her boldest vocal acrobatics.

Lida Husik and British producer Beaumont Hannant reunited under the moniker Husikesque. On Green Blue Fire (Astralwerks, 1996), however, Husik takes the lead, and the difference is palpable. The dreamy melodies of Bird, Bad Head Day, and Just Like Candy lull the listener into a trance over Hannant’s house pulses and electronic arrangements. The ethereal lullabies of Haunt Me and Soul Of Gold exist in a limbo of galactic Renaissance. The wild psychedelic musician of her early albums has disappeared, replaced by an astral mutation of funky-soul cocktail-lounge divas (Wonderland). Her voice and lyrics act as a beacon illuminating Hannant’s dark ambient expanses.

Husik moved to Los Angeles and recorded Fly Stereophonic (Alias, 1997), which took a step back, returning to a rock setup and to the pop-song format. The album presents itself as a collection of unpretentious little songs, simple motifs, and humble arrangements. The manifesto of this new phase is the swinging, ethereal nursery rhyme of the title track, suspended over a gentle guitar strum—a tone perfectly suited to her surreal personality. Other highlights are variations on the same theme: slightly more spacey in Sharon Hill Shadows, slightly more childlike and jingle-jangle in Chocolate City, culminating in the fairy-tale peak of Café Con Leche, counted among her masterpieces.
Another Husik emerges, nervous and intellectual, glimpsed on Soundman (with a brass fanfare) and especially Death Trip (with African polyrhythms and a beach organ), though perhaps it is just one of the last hallucinations of a former addict—or a prelude to new captivating adventures. Finally, there is the Husik capable of the melange in Dancing Pants, a kind of dub with Scottish bagpipes. The mature Husik, freed from the shackles of drugs, produces intelligent and surreal music, yet one that communicates in a simple and direct way. At times, it feels like a cross between the Indigo Girls and the Raincoats.

Faith In Space (Alias, 1998) builds on the experiments of The Match From Mars and her collaborations with Hannant, adopting the techno beat in particular. There is, however, a limit to how much her inspiration can be regimented, and in the guise of Donna Summer (with Hannant as Giorgio Moroder), as in Angels On The Floor, Husik becomes just another singer. She recovers in Dissolve and Waterfall, though here she resembles Enya catapulted into a sci-fi movie—or worse, into a video game.

Husik has matured as arranger, if not as composer, and Mad Flavor (Alias, 1999) is, first and foremost, an aural experience. This dreamy sound collage, that is also incidentally structured in songs, does to trip-hop what Frank Zappa's We're Only In It For The Money did to Merseybeat: it dismembers a genre and uses the parts to compose a symphonic work.